《每日电讯报》：应奖励长期业绩，而非短期风险的承担
本周，金融服务管理局发布了金融服务行业薪酬规范草案，随即引火烧身，招致一片怒斥，称其开倒车，纵容奖金文化卷土重来，而有人会说，奖金文化正是信贷危机爆发的根源。
This week the Financial Services Authority published its draft code on remuneration in the financial services sector and ran straight into a firestorm of complaints that it was back-tracking and allowing a return to the bonus culture, which some would claim was the root cause of the credit crunch.
正如抵抗运动的米歇尔在《法国小馆》里常说的：仔细听好，这话我只说一遍。
As Michelle of the Resistance used to say in ‘Allo ‘Allo: listen very carefully, I shall say this only once.
FSA 首席执行官赫克托·桑兹是对的。
Hector Sants, the chief executive FSA, is right.
FSA 的提议似乎大有可为，能从我的三个视角确保奖金按我所希望的方式运作。其意在确保高管的奖金基于利润，而非多年无条件保障、与业绩毫无关联。它应奖励长期表现，而非可能埋下长期风险隐患的短期成果。
The FSA’s proposal seems to go a long way towards ensuring that bonuses will work as I would want them to work from all three of my perspectives. It is seeking to ensure that bonuses for senior executives are based on profits and not guaranteed for years without any link to performance. It should reward long-term performance not short-term results that may store up longer-term risks.
那为何 FSA 的提议引发如此轩然大波？只因它们不满足民粹主义的主张——被政客们煽风点火——即奖金应当被彻底根除。正如赫克托·桑兹上周在第四电台采访中铿锵有力地指出，如果政府想搞社会工程，禁止银行家拿奖金，或禁止银行家收入高于医生，或高于或低于足球运动员和 C 级名流，那就该有胆量去立法。
So why has there been such a row about the FSA’s proposals? Because they don’t satisfy the populist notion, which is being fanned by politicians, that bonuses were to be eradicated. As Hector Sants pointed out forcefully in a Radio 4 interview last week, if the Government wants to engage in social engineering by banning bonuses for bankers, or pay for bankers that is more than doctors, or that is more or less than footballers and C-list celebs, then it should have the guts to legislate.
不过，在这方面我们得小心，别盼来不该盼的东西，因为我们面对的是一个认为通过新法律就能解决几乎所有问题的政府。
However, we must be careful what we wish for in this regard since we are dealing with a government that thinks that passing new laws is the answer to almost every problem.
比如，它通过了 2006 年《暴力犯罪减除法》，可我们都清楚，暴力犯罪并未减少。我依稀记得，在这部新法出台之前，暴力犯罪本来就已违法。或许，执行一些现有法律才是正道。
For example, it passed the Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006, yet we are all aware that violent crime has not decreased. I seem to recall that violent crime was already illegal before this new legislation. Maybe enforcing some existing laws might be the way forward.
民粹主义对奖金的攻击已催生一些怪象，比如某些银行预期无法发放奖金，便上调基本工资。这一攻击奖金的意外后果实在荒唐。在多数金融服务企业中，员工是最大的非财务成本，保留一支成本灵活的员工队伍，是对抗营收下滑的少数几道防线之一。上调基本工资不仅削弱了这种灵活性，也降低了干活的动力。
The populist assault on bonuses has already produced some bizarre results, such as some banks increasing basic salaries in expectation of not being able to pay bonuses. This unintended consequence of the bonus assault is ridiculous. Staff are the biggest non-financial cost in most financial services businesses and retaining a flexible-cost staff base is one of the few protections against a downturn in revenues. Increasing basic pay not only reduces that flexibility, it also reduces the incentive to perform.
正如 FSA 所指出的，金融服务是一个国际市场。英国金融服务企业与欧盟其他国家、瑞士、美国，以及日益壮大的亚洲同行竞争。这些国家至今没有哪个提出限制奖金或将其与资本充足率挂钩的方案。也许它们将来会提，但眼下 FSA 的提议——更别提立法可能带来的任何限制——是独此一家。
As the FSA points out, financial services are an international market. UK financial services firms compete with those from other EU countries, Switzerland, the United States and, increasingly, Asia. None of these other countries has yet put forward any proposals for curbing bonuses or linking them to capital adequacy requirements. Maybe they will, but at the moment the FSA’s proposals, let alone any curbs which might be brought on by legislation, stand alone.
那我们该怎么办？我自己的公司 Tullett Prebon 所在的行业由五家大公司主导，其中只有两家总部设在伦敦。我们难道该改掉员工的奖金（顺带说一句，这些奖金大多是合同约定、按公式计算的，不能单方面更改），然后眼睁睁看着他们流失到不受此类限制的美国、瑞士竞争对手那里去？如果像 FSA 暗示的那样，其他国家一年内不跟进，这个试验就被放弃，那我们或许还能把员工请回来。用更高的薪水。
So what are we to do? My own business, Tullett Prebon, is in a sector dominated by five major companies. Of these, only two are headquartered in London. Are we supposed to change our employees’ bonuses (which by the way are mostly contractual and formulaic and cannot just be altered unilaterally) and then lose them to our US and Swiss competitors who face no such curbs? If, as the FSA suggests, this experiment is abandoned after a year if other countries do not follow its lead, maybe we can hire our staff back. For more money.
最后，还有政府持股银行的奖金问题。这引来了乔治·奥斯本一如预期的回应：“必须告诉银行，纳税人提供的支持是用来重建资产负债表、恢复正常放贷的；不是用来给银行家大发巨额报酬的。”
Lastly, there is the subject of bonuses at the banks in which the state has a significant shareholding. This has produced the predictable response from George Osborne that “Banks need to be told that the support provided by the taxpayer is there to rebuild their balance sheets and resume normal lending; it is not there to help with mega-payouts to bankers.”
以不同于那些未被政府强制注资持股的银行的商业基础来运营这些银行，这个想法很危险。这些银行的员工干的活与那些未被政府控制的银行员工并无二致；如果他们的奖金受限，必然会出现向竞争对手银行高薪岗位的流动，而凡此类流动，能力最强的往往最容易跳槽。
The concept of operating these banks on a different commercial basis to banks that have not been forced to accept capital and a shareholding from the Government is a dangerous one. The staff in those banks perform the same tasks as in banks that have not become government controlled; if their bonuses are curbed there will surely be a migration to the better pay in competitor banks and, as with all such migrations, the best will be most able to make the move.
作为这些银行的纳税人股东，我希望看到政府能盈利退出所持的苏格兰皇家银行和劳埃德银行的股份，而实现这一点的唯一机会，就在于这些银行能留住关键人才，让他们有能力让银行重焕生机。这需要业绩奖金。
As a taxpayer-shareholder in those banks, I would like to see the Government exit the stakes it has taken in The Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds at a profit and the only chance of this happening is if these banks are able to retain the key staff who are able to make those banks viable once again. That will require performance bonuses.
Terry Smith
Terry Smith
The Telegraph
The Telegraph